Backwoods Bloodbath: Curse of the Black Hodag (2007)

Some movies cost lots of money to make, have big stars, and have great effects work by professional effects artists.  These are movies that most people tend to see.  There are other movies out there as well.  Sometimes a group of friends will get together and say the age old phrase “We should make a movie.”  These friends will gather up as many people as they can and buy a cheap camera.  They will use whatever little tricks they can think up to make the movie look better, though it does not always work out that way.  These movies can be entertaining, or they can be a complete bore.  They are the works of no-budget cinema.  One such example is Backwoods Bloodbath: Curse of the Black Hodag.

Backwoods Bloodbath is a 2007 film made for very little money.  It is directed by Donn Kennedy, and written by Donn Kennedy and Brandon Semling.  It stars such classic actors as Scott Ash, Ryan Buth, and David Lephardt.  The story is not very deep.  A group of friends go on vacation in a cabin in the woods and are hunted by a hodag.  What is a hodag, you ask?  I don’t know.  It’s kind of like a man, but it lays spiky eggs once in a while and does not have a human face.  That’s what it is.

This movie is definitely not for everyone.  I’m going to get that out of the way first.  This is not a good movie.  Nobody could ever call this a good movie.  It has good moments to it, but it is not a good movie.  If you decide to watch Backwoods Bloodbath, for whatever reason, you should not go into it expecting a masterpiece.  That would only lead to overwhelming disappointment.  Who wants that when they set out to watch something?  That said, let’s move onto what works and does not work in Backwoods Bloodbath.

Almost nothing about this movie is good when looking upon it on surface level and the entire movie is surface level.  The blood looks distractingly like strawberry or raspberry jam.  The acting is horrendously bad throughout most, if not all, of the movie.  The story and writing seem like they were started and finished in the time it would take someone to evacuate their bowels.   The music is mostly just noise, albeit not terrible noise, but noise all the same.

If so much is wrong with the movie, what could possibly be good?  It is quite an enjoyable movie.  Though the writing might not be what you would call “high-caliber,” Backwoods Bloodbath does have moments such as two guys furiously chugging gallons of milk, someone being called “Cheddar tits,” and one guy masturbating to a picture of his girlfriend (the picture being a guy in a wig).  This is one case in which the “so bad it’s good” idea can be interpreted as existing.  None of the moments would be good, if not for them being so outrageously bad.

Thought there are many bad elements to Backwoods Bloodbath, I still found it to be a pleasurable ninety minutes.  It’s a simple movie that has the sole purpose of having fun.  It succeeds on that front.  I would not feel right in recommending the movie though.  I can see most people disliking it.  However, I had a good time and don’t regret seeing it at all.  I hope that if you do choose to watch it, you will enjoy it as much as me.

There are some notes I would like to make:

• This movie is part of a collection that I have called The Midnight Horror Collection Volume 3.  I’m saying that in case you were actually looking for it.
• The idea of “so bad it’s good” was previously discussed in my blog post for Starcrash.
• Once again, I would like to say that you can leave any suggestions for bad movies in the comments, or send them to me on Twitter.